Most baby books also tend to romanticize the mother who stays at home, as if she really spends her entire day doing nothing but be...aming at the baby and whipping up educational toys from pieces of string, rather than balancing cooing time with laundry, cleaning, shopping and cooking.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

So it is with books, for the most part: they work no redemption on us. The bookseller might certainly know that his customers are ...in no respect better for the purchase and consumption of his wares. The volume is dear at a dollar, and after to reading to weariness the lettered backs, we leave the shop with a sigh, and learn, as I did without surprise of a surly bank director, that in bank parlors they estimate all stocks of this kind as rubbish.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

I rarely read any Latin, Greek, German, Italian, sometimes not a French book, in the original, which I can procure in a good versi...on. I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven. I should as soon think of swimming across Charles River when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

In the first place, all books that get fairly into the vital air of the world were written by the successful class, by the affirmi...ng and advancing class, who utter what tens of thousands feel though they cannot say.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Whenever any skeptic or bigot claims to be heard on the question of intellect and morals, we ask if he is familiar with the books ...of Plato, where all his pert objections have once for all been disposed of. If not, he has no right to our time. Let him go and find himself answered there.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »